


Capture the Flag

by Shiny_n_new



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Spoilers, Captivity, Dubious Consent, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-22
Updated: 2014-06-16
Packaged: 2018-01-26 03:17:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1672721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shiny_n_new/pseuds/Shiny_n_new
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky has always been willing to do Captain America's dirty work. This was no different. Sometimes, the day isn't won by high ideals or bravery or compassion.</p>
<p>Sometimes, it's won by monsters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I can never resist dark AUs, and this prompt at avengerkink called to me: http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/19023.html?thread=44706127#t44706127

On some subconscious level, Steve had understood what was happening way before the rest of his brain ever caught up. It was a dozen small inconsistencies, things that didn’t quite add up but weren’t strange enough to warrant his full attention. He had ignored them for as long as he could, because nothing mattered but stopping Hydra and finding Bucky. But now that he was kneeling on concrete with a dozen stun batons aimed at his head, every detail he’d tried not to see came crashing through his mind all at once.

Hydra facilities destroyed before he and Sam ever got to them. 

Walking into a Hydra base disguised as a radio station to find twenty-five bodies piled up in the middle of the room and the words ‘Hail Hydra’ written in blood on a whiteboard.

The statement ‘capture the flag’ appearing in hundreds of recently intercepted communications. It was an obvious code and security had been stepped up around several national monuments, but so far, no one had quite figured out what it was referring to.

Stun batons and nonlethal weaponry at the last five Hydra hideouts, even though Steve knew for a fact that he and Sam had kill-on-sight orders issued against them.

Codes that were, in retrospect, too easy to break, leading Steve and Sam on a trail through the Midwest and into Canada before angling back down into northeastern Montana.

It had all been a trail of breadcrumbs, a path lined with warning signs that Steve hadn’t been able to read. Natasha had told him to be careful, that he was pulling a thread that might unravel in a way he didn’t like. Steve wondered how much she knew, how much she had guessed before he ever did.

He could see boots approaching, beyond the circle of Hydra goons surrounding him, and he knew with a cold and terrible certainty who they belonged to.

“Long time no see, Cap,” said a painfully familiar voice. “I hear you’ve been looking for me.”

The crowd parted and Steve looked up to see Bucky smiling at him. It wasn’t a nice smile, but it was Bucky’s smile, and he looked miles better than he had the last time Steve had seen him. Bucky’s eyes were clear and focused. His hair was clean and tied back into a loose ponytail. He was wearing a heavy black jacket with a Hydra pin on the lapel.

Steve’s stomach roiled, and suddenly he was dangerously close to puking in front of his best friend and an entire squad of Hydra thugs.

“You’re not their prisoner,” Steve said, staring up at Bucky in the harsh fluorescent light.

“No, I’m not,” Bucky answered, still wearing a small smile.

Steve and Sam had broken into what was officially an abandoned missile silo looking for information on the whereabouts of either Bucky or the new leader of Hydra’s forces in America. From the looks of things, they’d found both. 

It felt like the ground had opened up beneath him to swallow him whole. Steve had the sensation of vertigo, like he was tumbling head over heels down some vast and endless cavern. But in reality, he was just kneeling on the ground, swaying slightly and staring up at Bucky with wide, uncomprehending eyes.

“How?” Steve asked. He was impressed with himself for being able to form words at all.

Bucky strolled closer, his hands in his pockets. He was the definition of calm and in control, and Steve didn’t miss the way the Hydra goons stared at him almost worshipfully. Worshipfully and attentively, like dogs waiting for a command from their master.

Steve had to swallow several times to keep from retching.

“Listen, I don’t want to have this reunion here,” Bucky said, nudging Steve’s knee gently with his boot. “There’s too much to talk about and I know you’ll do something stupid and make my friends here electrocute all the sense out of you.”

“Your friends?” Steve repeated numbly.

“Where’s his sidekick?” Bucky asked one of the Hydra soldiers.

“Subject Peregrine is still loose in the facility,” the soldier answered, and Steve felt his heart leap hopefully. “However, he’s been herded into the lower three levels, and we’re anticipating a capture within the hour.”

“Hear that?” Bucky asked, turning back to Steve. “Your buddy’s in the basement. It’s my understanding that birds of prey, especially ones who’ve had their wings clipped, don’t do very well in tight spaces.”

“Please, don’t do this,” Steve murmured, staring up at Bucky with desperate horror. It had been awful enough that the Winter Soldier had tried to kill his friends. But for _Bucky_ to be making threats…

“Hey, shh, it’s okay,” Bucky said. He squatted down next to Steve. _Bad move_ , the tactical part of Steve’s brain observed. He wasn’t restrained and could easily have lunged forward and taken Bucky hostage. Except no, he couldn’t. He would never hurt Bucky; he’d rather die. And apparently Bucky knew that, because he pulled his metal hand out of his pocket and rested it companionably on Steve’s shoulder. “Listen, I don’t want to hurt your friend. He’s a good guy, I’ve read his file. I can tell my boys to use strictly nonlethal measures to capture him, but I need you to promise to behave yourself. No attacking my guys, no trying to escape. Do as you’re told for once, kiddo, and Sam will be just fine.”

“Yes,” Steve said, nodding immediately. Sam would be safe, and that was the important thing right now. It was something to focus on when the recently-rebuilt foundations of Steve’s world were crumbling to pieces again. “I promise.”

“Give me your word, Cap,” Bucky said, his tone almost teasing. It was so familiar that Steve wanted to scream, to lunge forward and shake this stranger wearing Bucky’s face and speaking with his voice.

“I give you my word,” was all he said.

“Good boy.” Bucky stood up and glanced over to the far corner of the room. Steve looked over his shoulder, following Bucky’s gaze. He’d been taken down in some kind of large storage bay, the walls lined with wooden crates and supplies. His shield was wedged in the splintered remains of one of those wooden crates. “Be sure and lock that up in the vault. Before you do, though, send out a picture of it to the other bases, along with a message. ‘The flag has been captured’.”

_Be careful pulling that thread._ Steve was pretty sure he was the one unraveling.


	2. Chapter 2

“Come on.” Bucky pulled on his arm, tugging him to his feet. “My office is this way.”

“Your office,” Steve repeated, half disbelieving and half angry. That was a good sign, surely, feeling something besides numb horror.

“You my echo now?” Bucky led them down a short hallway that ended in a metal staircase, falling into step next to Steve as they walked. It was easy and natural, like they were strolling down to the movie theater to take in a show. It was like a century of ice, sleep, and blood hadn’t passed.

“What the hell is going on?” Steve said, stopping at the foot of the staircase and glaring up at Bucky. “What the _fuck_ do you think you’re-”

Bucky paused halfway up the stairs, his hands gripping the railing tightly. Over his shoulder, he said, “I’m not having this conversation in the hallway. Get your ass up here or I’m not telling you zip, you understand?”

It was familiar, it was all so familiar, and Steve wondered if he was dreaming. Was he just molding Bucky into being while he slept, mixing his memories with his nightmares? He jabbed his thumbnail into the palm of his hand nearly hard enough to draw blood, but the world around him stayed steady and real.

Not a dream, then. Pity.

Apparently he’d been silent for too long, because Bucky turned to look at him. Some of the roiling emotions he was feeling must have been showing on his face, because Bucky’s expression softened a little and he said, “C’mon, Steve. It’s just up the stairs.”

And so Steve followed, because what else could he do? He had come this far searching for Bucky; how could he turn around and run once he’d found him?

Bucky’s ‘office’ was almost comically bare, containing nothing but a desk, two chairs, and one battered metal filing cabinet. The walls and floor were both plain grey concrete, and the long, narrow window that overlooked the storage area didn’t offer much of a view. The thin, glossy black computer sitting on the corner of the desk was probably the only thing that had changed in the office for the past several decades.

“Cozy place,” Steve said, dropping into the chair across from the desk with enough force to make the wood creak in protest.

Bucky smiled again and perched himself on the corner of the desk closest to Steve. “Yeah, well, I killed the last occupant of this office and burned most of his tacky shit along with the body. Haven’t had the chance to redecorate.”

Steve felt cold, and it had nothing to do with the temperature in the little office. “Killed him?”

“Sure.” Bucky shrugged. “Hydra’s needed a good housecleaning for a while, and who better to do it than the Winter Soldier?”

Approximately twenty thousand questions swirled through Steve’s mind, but all he could manage to say was, “I don’t understand.”

Bucky’s lips quirked. “I know. I’m gonna explain. The first thing you need to know, Steve, is that Hydra’s not really an organization, not like SHIELD was. It’s more like a religion to most of them, but what they worship is power. They’ll follow whoever’s got the most charisma, whoever looks like they can crush the rest of the world under their boot.”

“You’re not as powerful as Pierce was,” Steve said, because he knew better than anyone else that having command on the battlefield wasn’t the same as having command the rest of the time.

Bucky’s lips curled upwards into a snarl at the mention of Pierce, and for a second Steve wondered if something very violent was about to happen. But Bucky remained motionless and said, “But Pierce is dead, and he laid Hydra’s secrets bare for the world to see. If it weren’t for Pierce, Hydra wouldn’t be scrambling right now. Pierce is _persona non grata_ , and if he weren’t already dead, he’d be wishing he was.”

Bucky’s smile was dark and vicious, but Steve couldn’t really blame him for the sentiment. He hadn’t been real fond of Pierce either.

“And thanks to you and SHIELD, a good chunk of Hydra’s best agents in the Western Hemisphere are either fried to a crisp, at the bottom of the Potomac, or sitting in a jail cell.” Bucky spread his arms. “Plenty of room for a former assassin to kill his way to the top.”

“And Hydra just handed you the keys and told you not to scratch the paint?” Steve asked, jaw clenched so hard that he could feel his molars grinding. It was either crack a tooth or start screaming, though, and Steve wasn’t sure he would be able to _stop_ screaming once he started.

“Most of Hydra didn’t know the details about me,” Bucky said, leaning forward into Steve’s space. Steve refused give ground and lean back. “Why bother telling the grunts the truth about the weapon you keep on ice and bring out every decade or so? Especially when you can let them think you’ve got an immortal assassin working for you instead.”

“The scientists who worked on you-”

“The scientists who worked on me are dead,” Bucky said, giving a nonchalant shrug. He leaned closer until he could murmur in Steve’s ear, “The scientists who worked on me died screaming for their lives.”

That was enough to make Steve jerk to the side, desperate for some space. Bucky obliged him by leaning back until there was a relatively normal distance between them.

“You shouldn’t have killed them,” Steve began. “They probably had information about what was done to you and we could have-”

“What makes you think I didn’t get that information, Steve?” Bucky smiled again, sharp-toothed and not quite sane. “I know what they did to me. I know who I was.”

“You don’t,” Steve said, almost pleading. “If you knew, if you remembered, you wouldn’t be doing this.”

Bucky straightened, his posture going military-rigid for a moment as he barked out, “Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes of the 107th!” He relaxed again, smiling that not-quite-nice smile at Steve again. “I remember enough. A lot of details are still missing or fuzzy, sure. But it’s enough. I remember you, Stevie.” He cupped Steve’s jaw suddenly and unexpectedly. “My best friend.”

Steve swallowed, the knuckles of Bucky’s flesh and blood hand pressing gently against his throat. “If you remember, then you can stop all of this, Bucky. We can call the police, the Army, whoever, and mop up the rest of Hydra’s forces in America. With what you know, we can probably move against them in Europe and Asia too. We can finish the job, for good this time.”

“Doubt it,” said Bucky, letting go of Steve’s chin gently. “The higher-ups don’t quite trust me that much. Hell, I think the only reason they trust me at all is because they think I’ve gone native. What’s the word they have for it these days?” He snapped his fingers, trying to remember.

“Stockholm Syndrome,” Steve answered, remembering the words of the military psychologist who’d explained it to him. _“If you think the only chance you have at survival is bonding with your captor, then that’s what you’ll do. It’s not insanity, it’s just animal instinct trying to get you out alive.”_

“That’s it. But I don’t have the launch codes for all the missiles or anything fun like that. I guess technically we’re less a branch of Hydra and more of an independent unit, which suits me fine. It’ll make it that much easier to justify bringing the rest of them down.”

Steve felt hope, cautious and fluttering. “You’re going to stop them? This…this is an act?”

Bucky sneered down at Steve. “You think I hail Hydra every night before I go to bed? I’m insulted. I know who they are, what they did to me. I hate them.” All the light dropped out of his expression for a moment. “I hate them more than you could ever know. I’m going to burn them off this planet. And replace it with something better.”

Steve shook his head, barely realizing he was doing it. “No. Bucky, please, stop and listen to yourself for a minute. You’ve been through a lot. You’ve been through more than anyone should ever have to. You need to heal. You need to get as far away from Hydra as possible.”

Something not especially nice flashed across Bucky’s face for a moment. “Trying to save me, Steve?” He leaned in close again. “You only really managed to do that once. Don’t start getting cocky.”

Steve flinched and opened his mouth to apologize. But the rational part of him knew Bucky was just trying to score a cheap shot. It wasn’t like Steve had been lying on a beach sipping drinks out of a coconut shell while Bucky had been strapped to a lab table for the last half a century. They’d both been put on ice.

So instead, Steve said, “I’m just trying to bring you home. That’s all I want, Buck, is for you to come home.”

Bucky’s shoulders slumped a little. He ran his hands through his hair roughly, and it was clear that for the moment, he’d backed away from whatever edge he’d been teetering on. For a second, it was 1940 again and Bucky was just Bucky, tired and frustrated after a long day. He smiled gently at Steve. “You’re so nice that I want to slug you sometimes, you know that?”

Steve smiled back. It was small and cautious, but it still counted. He and Bucky were sharing a smile together for the first time in decades. “I get that a lot, actually.”

“Come here.” Bucky stood up and drew Steve into a hug so tight that it nearly knocked the breath out of him. Surprised, Steve wrapped his arms around Bucky and hugged him back. 

The backs of his eyes burned, so Steve closed them hard and dropped his head against Bucky’s shoulder. This was the way things should have been. Bucky was in his arms, warm and whole and not trying to stab him to death. He let the hope inside of him grow. They could walk out of here and he could take Bucky home. They could take a trip back to Brooklyn together to marvel at everything that had changed and delight in everything that hadn’t. It would have been better if Bucky had lived a happy, normal life without him, the way Peggy had, but there was no changing the past. Steve couldn’t give Bucky back the years he’d lost, but he could give him back his future.

“You’ve always been so good,” Bucky murmured against his shoulder. Steve just grunted. Bucky continued, “Too good to do all the dirty little things that needed to be done.”

Steve’s eyes shot open. He tried to pull away, but Bucky kept the metal arm locked tightly around his back.

“I’ve always seen the way things really are, and I’ve always done the things you couldn’t,” Bucky said. His tone was almost loving, like he was muttering senseless little endearments into Steve’s ear. “That hasn’t changed. I don’t want it to change.”

Steve finally managed to yank himself away, staggering backwards and almost stumbling over his chair. Bucky leaned back against the desk, his expression serious and focused.

“The whole planet is in chaos, Steve, and Hydra’s got tentacles in every nook and cranny of it. All the integrity and bravery in the world isn’t going to change that. You know what will?” Bucky’s fingers dug into the edge of the desk, and the wood beneath his metal hand started to splinter. “Getting my hands around Hydra’s neck and squeezing until I hear it all crack.”

“And you think the best way to do that is to wear their goddamn lapel pin and pretend to be their _asset_ again?!”

The punch caught Steve by surprise. It was from Bucky’s flesh and blood hand, though, and so it only snapped his head to the side instead of sending him flying. He got his arm up to block the next blow, and for a moment he and Bucky just grappled with each other, each of them trying to get the upper hand. Not that Steve had a damned clue what he was going to actually do if he got the upper hand. He was still a mile underground in a Hydra base and Sam’s whereabouts were unknown. But he’d always been good at inventing a plan on the fly.

It was Bucky who backed off first. He shoved Steve backwards to give himself some space and then held both his hands up, the universal gesture of ‘All right, calm down.’ Steve kept his defense up for a few seconds until he was sure that Bucky had genuinely stopped trying to hit him.

“We’re hunting Hydra too,” Steve said, breathing hard through his nose. “You want to snap Hydra’s neck, fine. Come and do it with me. But not like this, not as a double agent.”

Bucky was already teetering too close to the darkness. Steve remembered the pile of bodies in the radio station, laid out carefully and deliberately with expressions of terror still on their faces. He wondered if Bucky had meant for them to be a gift.

“This is the only way it can be done!” Bucky shouted, his eyes wide and feverish. “You know as well as I do what a power vacuum does! That’s the secret behind their ‘cut off a head, two grow back’ bullshit! All they want a leader they can salute who will tell them what to do and give them a mission, and if you give them that then congratulations. You’ve got the keys to the kingdom.”

“This isn’t right,” Steve said, shaking his head almost violently. “This isn’t right, and it’s going to turn you into a _monster_ , Bucky.”

Bucky’s metallic arm shot out, grabbing for Steve’s throat. Steve had been anticipating it, though, and dodged to the side. He wished he had his shield.

“I’m already a monster, Steve.” Bucky laughed, and it was nowhere close to a happy sound. “Hell, I’m Frankenstein. Hydra strapped a dead man to a lab table and brought something new to life out of the pieces of him. I’m gonna return the favor.”

They circled each other, both of them looking for a weakness. But Steve’s mind was crowded with memories-

_-him and Bucky, wrestling happily on the floor of Bucky’s room. Learning to box when they were teenagers. After the serum, the first time Steve had put Bucky in a headlock and ruffled his hair in revenge for all the times Bucky had done it to him-_

-and he knew he couldn’t do this. He couldn’t fight Bucky, not again. But-

“I won’t let you do this to yourself,” Steve said through clenched teeth. “I’ll stop you. I’ll get out of here and if I have to bring you back home in handcuffs, than fine. That’s how we’ll do this.”

The anger fled out of Bucky’s expression, replaced with something that made Steve worry a whole lot more: calculation.

“Fine,” Bucky said, stepping aside suddenly and leaving Steve a clear path to the office door. “Go ahead, I’m not gonna stop you. You think I’m going to keep you here like a prisoner?”

Steve didn’t move, because he knew what Bucky looked like when he’d cooked up a scheme. This one couldn’t bode well for him.

“I’m going to keep Wilson, though, if you don’t mind,” Bucky said, lips curling up in something that might have been mistaken for a smile. “We’ll have caught him fair and square. He’s a good man to have in a fight, as you know, and maybe I can bring him around to my way of thinking.”

“Don’t you touch him!” Steve tackled Bucky, all traces of finesse or tactics gone. He remembered how Bucky had looked in that Hydra facility, staring up at the ceiling and repeating his name and serial number like a desperate prayer. The thought of Sam in the same position, bright eyes gone blurry and lost, felt like a bullet in his gut.

Bucky was _laughing_ , damn him, even as Steve did his best to pin him. “Gotta say, Stevie, I feel a little jealous right now.”

Steve finally managed to get Bucky pinned, digging his knees into Bucky’s stomach and keeping the weight of his shoulder against that metal arm. He panted down into Bucky’s face, wondering how this entire mission had gone so awry. At that moment, a small com unit pinned to Bucky’s belt crackled to life.

“Sir, we’ve captured Subject Peregrine. He’s injured but alive.”

Steve went still, his eyes wide in horror, and Bucky took the opportunity to flip them. Instead of pinning Steve, though, he just rested his weight on his knees and more or less sat on Steve. “Calm down, Cap. We’re going to make a deal.”

“Fuck you.”

Bucky grinned, a real expression of happiness. “Anyone ever tell you that you swear like a soldier?”

Steve threw a punch at Bucky, but Bucky intercepted it, catching Steve’s fist in a tight metallic grip. “At ease, all right? I’m not going to hurt Wilson, not if you stay here with me.”

Steve went still, feeling baffled and angry in equal measure. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I can’t stand the thought of seeing you locked up,” Bucky said, slowly releasing his grip on Steve’s fist. “But I know that you won’t stay put just because I ask. Lucky for me, you brought a friend along.” Steve thrashed under him and Bucky made a shushing noise. “A friend who I’m not going to hurt, not if you’re here. You agree to stay here with me, without me having to strap you down and put you in a cell, and the worst thing Sam’ll face is being bored.”

Something high and tight lodged itself in Steve’s throat and it took him a solid moment to regain his composure. He wanted to throw Bucky off of him. He wanted to pull Bucky down against him and not let go until he started talking sense. But neither would help Sam right now. “If you remember me half as well as you think you do, then you know I’m not just going to sit pretty while you practice your Hydra salute.”

Bucky’s lips twisted. “I know you better than you know yourself, Rogers. If you can manage to find Sam and escape the base, I’ll let you both go.” He rested his hands on Steve’s chest. “Until then, we can catch up, yeah?”

Bucky definitely wasn’t firing on all cylinders. Steve hoped it was because his better nature was trying to reassert itself over all the shit that Hydra had filled his head with for 70 years. Steve being around might help the real Bucky win that fight. And even if that was just wishful thinking, there was still the problem of Sam being a prisoner. 

Apparently satisfied that Steve wasn’t going to run, Bucky rolled gracefully off of him and onto his feet. He held out his metallic hand. “What do you say, Cap? Do we have a deal?”

Steve reached up to take the offered hand and let himself be pulled to his feet. “Deal.”


	3. Chapter 3

Steve knew there was no way he’d be left to wander the facility. He was headed to a cell, no matter how much Bucky wanted to pretend he was just a guest. Steve just hadn’t been expecting the cell to be Bucky’s room.

“It’s nicer than the prison block, and still easy to guard in case you’re feeling dumb,” Bucky said, shooing Steve further into the room and closing the door behind him.

“There’s only one bed,” Steve said, stuck on that observation for a moment.

Bucky waggled his eyebrows.

“You’re very confident in your seduction abilities for a guy who hasn’t gotten fresh with someone in half a century,” Steve said.

“Who says I haven’t had sex in half a century?” Bucky asked, grinning at him. “I wasn’t the one stuck in a glacier.”

Steve felt the blood drain from his face. He hadn’t thought about rape, his mind too filled with images of Bucky’s missing arm and a torso riddled with scars. But now he was cursing himself for being seven different kinds of stupid, because Hydra was full of monsters and Steve knew very well what monsters did to their prisoners. The files Natasha had given him had emphasized Bucky’s obedience. Steve felt his stomach lurch, nausea nearly getting the better of him for the second time in two hours.

“It was a joke, Steve, just a joke,” Bucky soothed. He pulled Steve towards him, resting his real hand on the crook of Steve’s neck. “You’re a lot easier to rattle these days.”

“Elderly people get agitated very easily,” Steve muttered, leaning into Bucky for the moment. If Bucky wanted to joke about what had happened to him, Steve wasn’t going to force the issue. Not right now, at least. Tomorrow was a different story.

“I’ve got so many old man jokes for you, buddy.”

“Not as many as I have for your ancient butt,” Steve said. Then he forced himself to pull back. There was a terrible danger in letting himself fall into Bucky the way he wanted to. It would be too easy to forget how damaged Bucky was, how close he was teetering towards the brink.

Bucky sense Steve’s change in mood and took a step back. “All right, you sit tight. I’m going to go check on Sam and make sure he’s getting patched up.”

“What if he needs to go to the hospital?” Steve challenged. “Hydra’s never really had a delicate touch.”

Bucky’s smile took on that strange and unfriendly quality that Steve had been seeing way too much of. “More delicate than you might think. He’ll be fine. They’re good at keeping the grievously injured alive.”

And what could Steve say to that? He wondered what a body looked like after it had been flung from a speeding train and fallen hundreds of feet down a craggy mountainside.

The door locked behind Bucky with a very final click, and Steve stared at it for a long moment. He could escape, most likely. Taking Sam with him was a lot less likely. He unclenched his fists, took a deep breath, and started poking through Bucky’s things.

There were more personal touches in the room than in the office, which was encouraging. It was evidence that Bucky was functioning like a person and not a weapon. The bed was just a standard military cot, but one that was thickly padded. A warm-looking quilt was folded at the foot of the bed, and Steve was relieved to see that Bucky was seeking out the creature comforts he’d been denied as the Winter Soldier. Any rebellion from Hydra was a good sign. 

Across from the door, a tall wooden bookcase and an old metal desk sat against the wall. They were a mismatched pair, but both clearly belonged to the same person because both of them were absolutely covered in books. The bookcase shelves were sagging from the weight and every available surface of the desk was piled with stacks of paperbacks. 

Steve approached the desk curiously. Bucky had never been a big reader. He’d done great in school, of course, and Steve remembered him with a book in his hand on long train rides or when Steve had been in the hospital. But Bucky had mostly preferred the radio or being out on the town.

Things made more sense when Steve was close enough to see the titles. The books were organized roughly chronologically, and Steve felt a sudden closeness to Bucky that had nothing to do with their friendship or the quiet moments in the darkness of their bedroom seventy years ago. 

_A Short History of the Twentieth Century. Slaying Hydra: The International Effort to Stop a Monster. The Making of the Atomic Bomb. A Girl in the War: The Life and Mission of Peggy Carter. Red Apple: Communism and McCarthyism in Cold War New York. The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination. The Man Who Built the Century: An Unauthorized Biography of Howard Stark. The Vietnam War: A Concise International History. The King Years: Historic Moments in the Civil Rights Movement. Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution. Desert Storm: A Forgotten War. A History of the Internet and the Digital Future._

_Captain America: The Man, the Myth, and the Legacy He Left Behind (Revised 2013 Edition)._

His own face stared up at him from the book on Bucky’s desk. It had been taken at base camp, before the serum, when he had been nothing but skin and bones and determination. Steve had become used to seeing his face on magazine covers and computer screens, but seeing it here gave him a terrible sense of unreality.

He sat down heavily in the swivel chair in front of the desk, running his thumb along the spines of a stack of paperbacks. Steve knew, better than maybe anyone else alive, what it was to wake up and find the world had passed you by. He’d been talking to Natasha about it once, just idle post-mission chatter, and he’d likened it to trying to assemble a puzzle with no edge pieces and no idea what it should look like. It was tedious, often surprising, and very frustrating. He sorted and sorted through the pieces, putting them together when he could and hoping he had some idea of the bigger picture.

Natasha had smiled, flicking her hair over her shoulder in a red wave, and responded, “I can’t guarantee that it’ll be a pretty picture, once you put it all together.”

Steve slid the book about him away, to the opposite corner of the desk. Below it was another book, titled _Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America._ He snarled, and for a wild moment he wanted to toss it across the room as hard as he could. Instead, Steve thumbed it open to the index until he saw the name he was looking for. Zola, Arnim, page 204.

The Zola in the picture looked nervous, ill at ease with the American soldiers surrounding him. Steve wondered how much of it had been an act. He hoped not all of it. He hoped that Zola had lived with the creeping, paranoid knowledge that he’d done things worthy of a bullet to the head and that at any moment someone might just give him what he deserved.

In the end, though, it had been a rain of bombs that killed him, long after he should have been dust.

 _Stop fucking around, Rogers._ He gave the order a distinct military cadence, and that helped.

He flipped to the back of the book, stopping at a page that was blank except for a small publishing watermark at the bottom. Steve tore the page out carefully, taking care not to completely destroy the binding on the book. He’d learned the hard way that books and sketchpads were a bit more delicate post-serum. Once the page was out, he closed the book and stacked the Captain America biography back on top of it. Hopefully, by the time Bucky ever noticed a page was missing, Steve and Sam would be long gone.

There was a small cup full of pens, pencils, and highlighters on the desk. Most of the pencils were mechanical, but two were the old-fashioned kind that Steve needed. He grabbed one and snapped it in half, kicking the half with the eraser under the bookcase afterwards. A quick once-over of the desk revealed nothing that was obviously out of place. He tucked the folded paper and pencil stub into the pocket of his jacket; if Bucky discovered them before he could pass his illicit cargo on to Sam, Steve could always claim that he’d just happened to have them in his pockets.

Bucky was smart, and there was no way he would let Sam tell Steve the location of the cell block. So Steve and Sam would just have to be sneaky.

By the time Bucky returned, Steve was sitting on the bed, browsing through a glossy photographic history of The Beatles.

“There’s a tribute video about you on Youtube that’s set to ‘Working Class Hero’,” Bucky said as he closed the door behind him. Steve caught a glimpse of guards on either side of the door, guns gleaming.

Steve raised an eyebrow. “You sure it’s a tribute and not some kind of sarcastic social commentary?”

Bucky shrugged. “Maybe it’s both.” He approached the bed. “Sam’s all right. A minor concussion and a fractured wrist. He wasn’t happy to see me.”

“Can’t imagine why,” Steve said, closing the book and putting it on the small nightstand by the cot. He moved to get up, but then Bucky flopped down on the bed beside him.

“Probably because I tore his wing off and kicked him over the side of the Helicarrier,” Bucky said breezily, propping himself up on his elbows. “But he survived. You’ve got a knack for finding people who can do that.”

“Just lucky, I guess,” Steve said, holding himself very still. Bucky was warm, heat radiating against Steve’s side.

“Very lucky,” Bucky said, turning to face him. “I never failed to take out a target before.”

Steve felt like he was walking along a narrow, rocky ledge, one that could crumble beneath him at the slightest provocation. “Sorry to break your record.” 

“If it hadn’t been for you, I’d have never gotten free or remembered who I was,” Bucky said, eyes intense. “You saved me again, Steve.”

“You saved me, too,” Steve said, and when he turned to look at Bucky he was almost startled by how close the other man was. It would be easy to lean forward and close the gap between them. Bucky seemed to be waiting for it. Instead, Steve leaned away. “How much do you actually remember? No bullshit, this time.”

Bucky’s mouth twisted, and he turned his head away from Steve to look at the far wall. “No bullshit?”

Steve nodded.

“Childhood’s pretty fuzzy,” Bucky said, still not looking at Steve. “I don’t remember how we met.”

That hurt a little, to know that Steve was the only one who remembered Bucky reaching his hand down to a skinny, battered child who was lying in the dirt.

“I don’t remember much of school, although apparently I went,” Bucky continued. “But the last, I dunno, five or six years before the war, I remember those okay.”

“Do you remember the war at all?” Steve asked. He knew head injuries and major trauma could sometimes just wipe out the memories of the things that came immediately before. He remembered Morita blinking in confusion in the medical tent, concussed and confused after driving a Jeep at full speed into a Hydra tank. As far as Steve knew, Morita had never really gotten his memories of that day back.

Bucky turned back to him, and for a frightening moment his eyes were blank and cold. “I remember everything about the war.”

Steve fumbled for something, anything, that might wipe that look off Bucky’s face. But he couldn’t think, couldn’t feel much of anything besides horror and sadness, and so he ended up saying, “And what about after that?”

The question didn’t quite wipe the cold and the anger from Bucky’s eyes, but it made that icy look retreat a little, like a glacier in the summer. “Eh, bits and pieces.”

“Like what?”

“Cities. Missions. A few faces and names.” Bucky rolled onto his knees. “A lot of it was Russian, in the beginning.”

“I was wondering about the star,” Steve said, nodding at the gleam of red on Bucky’s arm.

Bucky let out a sardonic little chuckle. “Hydra and the Soviets got along really well for a while. Hydra liked having a bolt hole after the Nazis fell, and Stalin liked having some variety when it came to getting rid of his enemies.” The corner of Bucky’s mouth tilted up. “But Hydra is only ever loyal to Hydra. He probably should have remembered that.”

Steve kept his expression neutral. “And what do you remember after that?”

But Bucky had apparently gotten bored of that line of questioning. He raised his metal arm and pushed against Steve’s chest, with just enough force to suggest he could pin Steve if he needed to. Steve let himself be pushed flat on his back; it wasn’t something he would do for most people, since giving ground had never been in his nature. But this was Bucky.

“You’ve read my file, Steve,” Bucky said, prowling forward until he was perched above Steve. His knees pressed against the inside of Steve’s thighs, and his metal hand was cool against the side of Steve’s neck. “You and I both know where I’ve been. So let me tell you something you don’t know.”

He needed to push Bucky away. This was treading into dangerous ground, ground he couldn’t walk while Bucky was clearly unstable. But as Bucky lowered his lips to mouth at Steve’s collarbone through his T-shirt, all Steve could think was _‘I thought I’d lost this forever.’_ Bucky didn’t smell the same, didn’t weigh the same, but it was still _Bucky_ and all Steve wanted to do was wrap his legs around Bucky’s waist and never let go.

Bucky’s lips trailed up Steve’s neck until they hovered over the shell of his ear. He whispered, “Rogue Hydra cells have made 27 different attempts at killing you since you crashed the Helicarriers.”

Steve went stiff. So much for losing himself in the moment.

“I stopped them,” Bucky murmured, hips fitting against Steve’s. “I brought them to heel. You think we aren’t on the same side, but we are. I want you to be safe.”

Steve swallowed once, twice, and cleared his throat.

“Know what I want?”

Bucky just hummed, stroking the side of Steve’s throat with his thumb.

Steve turned his head to look up at Bucky. “My own bed.”

He figured that was as harsh a dismissal as he could manage without throwing Bucky off of him. 

Bucky’s hand mechanical hand curled into a fist at the side of Steve’s head, and for the barest second his lips pulled back into a snarl. Steve felt a frission of fear. Not that Bucky would force him, never that, but that they were about to get violent while Steve was pinned on his back.

But Bucky just rolled off of him instead. His movements were graceful and leonine, not at all like a man who’d just been rejected. He walked to the door, his footfalls nearly silent despite his heavy boots, and poked his head out to speak to the guards. After Bucky had given them his order, he turned and leaned against the door, crossing his arms across his chest. “Never thought you’d be the one playing cold fish, considering how often I had to pry you off of me.”

Steve wondered if Bucky was calling him easy and wanted to laugh. He wanted to cry, too, but that wasn’t a new feeling. He just gave Bucky a frosty stare and stood up as well, planting his feet squarely. Peggy had always compared him to a bull preparing to butt heads when he stood like that. He thought of her, frail and lost in a hospital bed. He wondered if she’d ever been a Hydra’s target. 

The cot arrived a few minutes later, and two Hydra goons unfolded it to set it up. Steve wanted to kick them out and do it himself, both because they were Hydra and because he could set up a cot, for God’s sake. But speaking would mean breaking the cold silence between himself and Bucky. Steve wasn’t going to be the one to talk first.

The silence lasted as the Hydra agents scuttled out of the room and for a full minute afterwards. It was Bucky who broke it first, shaking his head and pushing off the wall with an irritated snort. 

“I ought to have known I couldn’t out-stubborn you. Get your ass into your bed, Rogers. It’s one in the morning and I want some sleep.”


	4. Interlude One

Sam recognized the feeling of being sedated. It was actually pretty pleasant, a barely-awake state in which everything was calm and there was nothing to worry about. It reminded Sam of being a kid and falling asleep in the backseat during a long car ride. He was aware of movement, of sound, but it was all far away.

Waking up was when things got dicey. 

He heard the steady beep of a heart monitor and cracked his eyes open to see bright fluorescent light shining down on him. His first thought was, _Hospital._ His second thought was Steve. More specifically, a lack of Steve. There was no chair by his bedside, no jacket draped over the chair, no sign that Steve had gone down the hall to piss and would be right back. Which meant Steve was not with him at all, and that was a really, really bad sign.

The room he was in looked like a hospital room, but even through the slowly clearing haze of sedatives, he noticed there were no windows. Military base, maybe? But no, this was the US, not Afghanistan; no need to bother with reinforced walls and defensive perimeters. 

It was about then that the memories started filtering in through the sedation, and Sam remembered being kicked off a balcony by 300 pounds of muscular Hydra goon.

 _Fuck._ So much for a quick break-in at a long-abandoned Hydra base.

Sam looked down at himself, pleased to see he was in one piece. His right arm was wrapped in a splint and a sling, but at least it was still there. He was still in his T-shirt and jeans, although someone had taken his jacket, shoes, and belt. That was about it when it came to good news, though, because his left arm was handcuffed to the bed railing.

Sam scowled at the handcuffs, scowled at the IV stand beside him, and got to work. He turned on his side and considered his options. They’d searched his pockets and the room was bare besides his bed and the medical equipment, so picking the lock on the handcuffs didn’t seem likely. His injured hand felt like it had all the dexterity of five sausages duct-taped together, so he wasn’t sure how successful his lock picking efforts would have been anyway. (But moving it didn’t hurt, so Hydra had been thoughtful enough to give him painkillers along with sedatives. Weird. Very weird. Things were not adding up.) He’d go with Plan B, then. Moving carefully, Sam eased the IV out of his cuffed hand.

When the door opened a minute and a half later, Sam had already slashed open the IV bag, using the fluid inside to get his left hand soaking wet. A little lubrication went a long way when it came to sliding out of handcuffs, and Sam was making decent progress in squeezing his hand through the tight circle of metal. But not enough progress. As the door creaked open, Sam froze in place. His heart sank as he looked up to face his captor. So much for his great escape.

In through the door walked Bucky fucking Barnes, and that was when it really sank in that this entire mission had gone straight to hell and set up camp in the lowest circle.

He recognized Barnes from the history books and the Internet, of course. There was also the memorable incident where Barnes had charged at him like a rabid pit bull and kicked him off the side of the Helicarrier. But Sam also recognized him from the pictures Steve carried in his wallet and stared at when he thought no one was looking; from the three dozen sketches of him Steve had made during their long trip, the lines of his face etched across notebook paper and napkins. Sam had started to feel like he knew Bucky, at least a little, from how much Steve had talked about him.

All of that flew out the window, though, and the only thing Sam could think to say was, “You’re the Winter Soldier.”

“Guilty as charged,” Barnes said, and Hydra soldiers streamed in the door behind him, their guns leveled at Sam.

Despite the guns, Sam stood up. He was still shackled to the bed, but he wanted to face whatever was coming on his feet.

“You aren’t their hostage,” Sam said. It wasn’t a question, not really, but the answer was still important. There was no point in getting himself killed over a misunderstanding.

“I’m calling the shots, actually,” Barnes said, and actually had the nerve to _smirk._

Sam could feel his teeth grinding, an old, nervous habit that he’d never really gotten rid of. “Is Steve still alive?”

The possibility that Barnes might turn actively hostile towards Steve had been lurking in the back of Sam’s mind for pretty much the entire trip. It was a terrible pattern that Sam had seen repeated too many times: sometimes, a person who’d been profoundly damaged turned on the people closest to them. It was a coping mechanism, albeit a terrible one, lashing out at the person whose love and support hadn’t been enough to keep the horrors of the world at bay. Sometimes, those situations ended in divorce or shattered friendships. Rarely (but still too often, even once would have been too often) it ended with a murder.

If Steve was dead, if Barnes had cracked enough to put a bullet in his ex-best friend’s head, then Sam knew he sure as hell wasn’t getting out of there alive. Better to die on his feet than allow himself to be taken alive by Hydra. Bucky Barnes was living proof of that.

But Barnes looked honestly confused for a second. “What? Of course he’s still alive.”

Sam felt like half of his muscles unclenched all at once. He hadn’t even realized how stiffly he’d been holding himself. He nodded and, moving slowly, sat back on the bed. “All right. Okay. I’m cooperating, then.”

“Good to know,” Barnes said, his hands still in the pockets of his coat like they were having a chat over coffee. “Steve took the news of you getting captured pretty hard. I don’t think he’d like learning that you got your kneecaps shot off.”

“No, probably not,” Sam said, staring angrily at a point just over Barnes’ shoulder. He stayed still as the Hydra soldiers strapped him down again, this time with hospital-style restraints. His feet and his uninjured hand were both tied firmly to the bed railing, and they stripped the sling off of his injured arm in order to strap his upper arm to the bed. When they were done, Barnes dismissed them and they went, trotting out of the room like obedient dogs.

Sam didn’t bother to struggle against his restraints. He’d save that for when he was alone. He still startled a little when the bed underneath him began moving, pushing him up into a sitting position. Strapped down the way he was, there wasn’t much he could do to stop his body from being manipulated. Barnes was standing at the foot of the bed, smirking and playing with the controls.

“I want to see Steve,” Sam said, not letting himself be intimidated by the little power play Barnes was putting him through. “He hasn’t had his daily dose of me telling him he’s a dumbass.”

Barnes smiled at him, and the expression looked sincere for a moment. “Oh, don’t worry. I’ve told him he’s an idiot.”

“I still want to see him.”

“And you will,” Bucky said. He didn’t move away from the foot of the bed, tapping his metal fingers on the plastic rail lightly. “Once you’re out of the hospital wing, anyway.”

“I’ve had broken bones before, I don’t need to be in the hospital wing.” Sam spoke in his most patient voice, what Steve called his counselor voice. He still wasn’t sure what Barnes was up to, and didn’t want to agitate him. Not just yet, anyway.

“We’re not monitoring your wrist,” Barnes said, and his smile became something not at all nice. 

Ah. There was the Winter Soldier in the flesh. 

Sam jerked against the restraints, unable to help himself. As if on cue, the door opened to reveal a Hydra soldier wheeling in another IV bag.

“I’m not in pain and you already busted my escape attempt the first time,” Sam said, still trying for a calm, unruffled tone. “No need to poke me with anymore needles.”

“Steve speaks really highly of you, you know that?” Barnes said. “So that clearly means you have no sense of self-preservation. Your escape attempt proved that. What was your plan, exactly, with a sprained wrist and a thumb you were going to dislocate trying to get out of those cuffs?”

Sam jerked as the Hydra goon came closer to him, twitching his hand away as best he could. The bed moved suddenly, reclining rapidly and forcing Sam to lie back helplessly.

“Behave,” Barnes said, “or you’re gonna get another concussion on top the first.”

Sam considered struggling, considered doing his best to break the needle inside of him just to be a pain in the ass. But in the end, he decided to save his strength and let the Hydra soldier slide the IV line into his hand with professional ease. The rush of sedatives hit him in seconds, making the whole world seem fuzzy and harmless. He closed his eyes and did his best to keep a clear mind, to hold on to that rush of fear and adrenaline.

He kept his eyes closed even as he heard footsteps approaching the head of the bed. He only opened them when he felt a cool metal finger tapping against his forehead. Barnes was leaning over him, staring down at him with a sort of cold, detached smugness. “Don’t go to sleep just yet, Wilson. We’re having a talk.”

“Seems like you’re mostly talking at me,” Sam said. And hey, why the hell not antagonize the crazy cyborg assassin leaning over him? “Pretty much like every other wannabe supervillain in Hydra that Steve and I have been dealing with.”

“The difference between me and them, besides that they’re dead and I’m alive, is that I know Steve.” Barnes rested his elbows casually on the railing, leaning further into Sam’s space just to prove that he could. “I know how he thinks. I know what he’d do for his friends.”

“And so I’m a hostage for his good behavior,” Sam said with disgust. It would work, too. If there was one thing that turned Steve into a guilty mess, it was people getting hurt on his watch, especially people he cared about.

It was nice to know that he was that important to Steve, actually, but now wasn’t really the time for warm, cuddly feelings.

“You’re smart,” Barnes said with a smile. “And you’re a good man. Hydra’s got your file, it made for some interesting reading. I can see why Steve came to you.”

“You used to be a good man, too,” Sam said. If Steve hadn’t gotten through to Barnes, then odds were Sam wouldn’t either. But sometimes hearing the truth from a stranger could be helpful. “You still can be. Steve loves you. He trusts you. Don’t betray that trust, don’t do that to him.”

“Trust is Steve’s problem,” Barnes said, “even after SHIELD. He doesn’t have the sense to watch his own back, and no offense Wilson, but I don’t trust you to do it for him. If I let you two run around nipping at Hydra’s heels for much longer, then not even I could stop someone from putting a bullet in both your heads.”

“Your boss thought something similar,” Sam said, clenching his jaw even as his eyelids tried their best to droop closed, “and I think they’re still cleaning his blood up.”

At the mention of Pierce, Barnes’ hands went tight around the plastic railing. Sam cringed backwards, because suddenly it was the Winter Soldier staring down at him, his eyes intense and furious.

“I’m not Pierce, _ptichka,_ ” Barnes said, his accent gone harsh and unfamiliar. Sam wondered what Barnes was calling him. He watched as Barnes swallowed a few times, and Sam could hear the railing creak as he slowly let go of it. “I’m better than him.”

He leaned over Sam to fiddle with the IV line. His free hand rested on Sam’s chest, the metal cold and threatening through the thin fabric of his T-shirt. Barnes’ fingers pressed down just above his heart, and Sam felt a flash of sharp, unexpected pain. He looked downwards, as best as he was able to, and noticed the edge of a white bandage poking out of the collar of his T-shirt. His chest hadn’t been injured, had it? Surely he would have remembered that?

“I love Steve,” Barnes said, leaning back to take his weight off of Sam. He’d adjusted the dosage on the IV, Sam realized, feeling his eyelids grow heavy and his limbs go numb. “You’re a good man, and I want to keep you alive for him.” He leaned in close, his hair falling forward to tickle along Sam’s cheek. “But good men die all the time, Wilson. Consider this your warning. _Behave._ ”

Barnes turned on his heel, not even bothering to glance backwards. Sam heard him say, “Get someone in here to make sure the stitches haven’t torn.” And then Sam was slipping under, the world going black around him as he fell unconscious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Ptichka_ -Anglicized version of птичка, or "little bird."


End file.
